I don't have much to say today that will enlighten the national or global conversation of the Connecticut shooting. Nothing that hasn't already been said by countless other normal, not sociopathic people.

I cry every time I hear the latest update on this story. The news hits me more directly than other stories because the victims were just a year or two older than my daughter, and all the obituaries list personalities and likes that I can relate to as a mother.

Every parent can relate, I'm sure. KITV's Paul Drewes and I were talking about this after his Sunday morning show. "(Co-anchor) Jill (Kuramoto) kept crying during the shooting stories so I had to keep reading the scripts right after," he shared. Paul, Jill, and I all have kids around that age. I would also be crying on air, I'm sure.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICANS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? WHY ARE PEOPLE SO MEAN TO EACH OTHER?

9 Responses to “Sad”

Have you seen those T-shirts and car stickers with the slogan "Defend Hawaii" showing an assault rifle? They're sold in lots of malls and surf shops. The company selling them even had a special Christmas sale going on at Windward Mall at the same time on Sunday when President Obama was giving a nationally televised speech in the town where the massacre happened. All the "Defend Hawaii" T-shirts show the same AR-15 assault rifle used in the school massacre.

One of their T-shirts shows the Kamehameha statue with the King holding an assault rifle in his outstretched hand. There were huge protests a few years ago when a tourist brochure showed the statue with the King holding a martini in his hand. But nobody seems to protest the "Defend Hawaii" junk. I think the people behind the "Defend Hawaii" company should be "outed" and ostracized, and so should the people who wear those T-shirts or display the assault rifle and slogan on their cars and pickup trucks, and the stores that sell that stuff. For details, read my short webpage athttp://tinyurl.com/c2puv6p

Thank you, Diane. Friday brought back memories of previous tragic events such as Columbine, Sept. 11, and the Xerox shootings. Difficult to witness and process as an adult, mores as a parent of young children who should live in a world of unfettered hope for as long as possible.

I talked with one of our kids recently to see whether they wished we had handled things differently. (We had much heartache as parents but ended up explaining in general terms asap, answering questions, keeping the TV off, and doing lots of hugging. Our kids said some of their classmates on 9/11 found out about the attacks at school. I woke them up early and told them.) She said it was scary but all right to see a parent cry while talking about events ... that it helped then and later to know that these events were hard to cope with even for adults.

You just go on, wipe the tears, and live life. With peace and love, as you suggest.

I have never liked (would use the "h" word but not here) the "Defend Hawaii" logo with the assault rifle seen on shirts and stickers on vehicles aound the island. I once saw the shirt on a boy around 12 or 13 yo. I thought what kind of parent would buy a shirt like that for their child? What do visitors to our island think when they see that logo and do they perceive locals as violent? Anyway, I was shaken as I think most parents were when word got out. I came home and hug my kids a little tighter and told them I love them which I normally do anyway but it came with more emotion.

I am deeply disappointed in the apparent censorship of this article's comments section. All I said was that the person was not normal and had a mental health issue. No one could have predicted this except for the mother who might have been blinded by love. What's wrong with that?

Ken & Lowtone123, agreed. I had never really thought about it until you wrote than and now I see it on bumper stickers, etc. I searched it and its website claims to be about defending aloha, and that the rifle is the highest level of protection. Pretty imaginative PR spin. But you're right, unless their supposed philosophy is spelled out that way, the first impression is violence. We as a society need to stop glorifying violence.

Relax and figure . . . this kind of crime would STILL happen if you passed a law to cut off the trigger finger of all good Americans. (because you just KNOW the individuals who would commit this crime in the future wouldn't submit to such digit removals.)

A city as liberal as San Francisco would put their mentally ill IN JAIL at one time. Think was the 1970s. Yeah, the "lack of mass shootings" 1970s.

It's NOT the guns' problem. Go back to drawing board, all you anti-gun advocates.

And, also, it's NOT the glorification of violence through -- I assume you folks are advocating, through movies, etc. -- these guys have it in them to do what they're gonna do no matter what.

John Wayne Gacy loved classical music. Hitler loved artsy far(sy stuff. Are we to say what they loved was influence with the horrors that they respectively unleashed? Didn't bin Laden come from a family that provides the liquid to help make your car go? How 'bout Saddam Hussein? No doubt his palaces are beauuuuuuutiful; he had good taste, no? So, let's ban classical music, valuable art at museums, gasoline, and nice architecture. And we'll be even safer along with the banned guns, banned movies, banned music. All that. And North Korea can look at us and say, "they're worse off than us. Except they haven't curbed the whole mass shooting thing. They might need to ban more things than they already have."